Windows 7: Groups look to cloud computing standards

With an evergrowing number of companies incorporating cloud computing into the enterprise, more and more questions continue to pop up and to help answer those issues a number of groups are looking to set standards in the cloud computing industry.

InformationWeek recently reported that a group of bodies calling themselves "the Cloud Standards Coordination Working Group," is looking to establish a set of standards in a number of cloud computing areas including security, management frameworks and data exchange formats.

Speaking at a panel discussion at the National Defense University Information Resources Management College's Cloud Computing Symposium, Gartner vice president David Cearley said the standards for cloud computing must be carefully established as to make sure they are not too stringent.

"Standards is one of those things that could absolutely strangle and kill everything we want to do in cloud computing if we do it wrong," he said, according to the news provider. "We need to make sure that as we're approaching standards, we're approaching standards more as they were approached in the broader internet, just in time."

With a recent study from IBM finding that 69 percent of midsize businesses are already using cloud computing or planning to implement it soon, it seems that a set of standards will be necessary for the industry.